Employee communication is essential to a healthy workplace. But communication can be difficult when employees are working in different offices or even different continents and time zones. Having a great set of employee intranet features helps employees communicate and work together more effectively within a single digital workplace.
But what are the best employee intranet features?
In this blog post, we'll discuss the benefits of creating an employee intranet, as well as the top features and qualities that make a great intranet. We'll also share some tips for choosing the right intranet software for you, and provide some final thoughts on intranet usage in the modern workplace. Read on to learn more!
The Top 7 intranet employee features:
Mobile access to your intranet and all it's capabilities;
Central knowledge base with easy file sharing;
Single sign-on, for one quick login to your intranet and other systems;
Role-based experience customization, giving you full control;
Personalized homepages with relevant content tailored to each employee;
People directory with contact details and individual profiles (with photos!);
Engagement tools & trackers, to get employees actually using your intranet.
Why create an employee intranet?
Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2022 reports that only 21 percent of employees are engaged at work. But did you know that an employee intranet is more than just an engagement platform? It's an excellent tool for supporting employees in their roles and connecting them to the right people and technology to make their work lives better. With the right features and content, you can use an intranet to help your people feel connected, well-resourced, and valued. A modern intranet can also make internal communication between employees more effortless and efficient. This can be a crucial tool in ensuring team cohesion and productivity. By establishing an employee intranet, your business will become more efficient, organized and profitable.
Make your intranet so good it becomes your employees favourite way to communicate
Employee communication is essential to an organization's success. An intranet that is easy to navigate, and packed with features that are useful and helpful, is a surefire way to create a great employee experience. Keep in mind that intranets don't have to be complex or overwhelming - in fact, many employers prefer them to be the opposite. Make use of tools like blogs, chat rooms, and message boards to allow employees to share their thoughts and ideas. Make sure the layout is simple and easy to understand and ensure that all content is easily accessible.
Additionally, invest in employee surveys and polls to get their feedback and suggestions on their working environment, and how the intranet is impacting employee productivity and satisfaction. This will help you make necessary changes and enhancements. In the end, having an intranet that is employee-friendly will go a long way in helping your organization thrive.
To have the best employee intranet, you need these things...
74% of CFOs plan to transition employees from on-premise to remote work permanently (Happeo). Since remote work is on the rise (63% of employees work remotely at least part-time, according to a recent study by workplace software company Zenefits), it’s important for your employee intranet to support this trend.
To create a great employee experience, launch an intranet that is easy to use and navigate. Make sure it allows employees to directly engage with your content by offering features such as Likes and Comments on news articles, peer recognition and 'shout-out' leaderboards, staff surveys and quizzes, etc – anything that makes them feel more engaged will reap benefits!
An intranet is an excellent tool for keeping your employees informed about company happenings and communicating important information. So embrace the two-way comms revolution, and take pride in promoting your internal comms and employee success stories.
Employee empowerment
Employee empowerment is a goal of many intranets, because it allows employees to take control of their work and career development. Intranets that provide employee resources like job postings, chat rooms, social networking groups, allow them to collaborate with other team members more effectively—and get advice from experts within your organization.
Intranets also provide in-house training that allows employees to stay up-to-date and learn new skills faster than they would by attending classes.
However, designing an intranet that actually delivers on employee empowerment isn't easy – it takes time and effort, but studies have shown that happy employees are more productive and satisfied with their jobs overall. So, if you want to create an intranet that is truly outstanding, start by embracing employee empowerment features that will help workers take control of their lives and careers.
How does your digital workplace compare?
Ensuring that employees have easy access to company information and resources is one way to create a positive work environment. This is where intranet features come in handy. They can help workers stay organized and connected, reduce stress levels, and contribute to a positive employee experience. Intranet systems can also help gather employee feedback and monitor performance. By designating an Intranet as the official communication platform for your team, you're building a strong foundation for future success and a central one-stop-shop resource your employees use and trust.
Intranets can be customized to create a unique user experience, so be sure to take advantage of all its features!
The 15 Employee Intranet Features for a Great Employee Experience:
1. Create a centrally accessible knowledge base.
An intranet experience that's truly outstanding starts with an intranet that's easy to navigate. Having information stored in lots of different places, or in badly organised folders on the company server, makes life difficult for employees. Solutions like Hub, allow you to create an online knowledge management solution with fully customizable navigation, so that you can make it easy for employees to find the information they need in under 3 clicks. From building department pages and sharing documents, to connecting your Sharepoint or cloud drives, your intranet's knowledge base needs to be the place that employees can go and know that they will find what they need, and be able to access that information from anywhere - not just the office. This is great for work-from-home arrangements, as well as when employees are on the go.
Having all your company files stored online and accessible from anywhere, might sound like a security nightmare, but far from it. Employee intranets have very robust and secure security systems, with strict password-protected access and even two-factor authentication for IT's peace of mind. At the end of the day, creating a central knowledge based is the foundation of a well-designed intranet, that can make a big difference in employee engagement and work satisfaction.
2. Ensure all your content is tagged for a better experience.
Creating an employee intranet is an important task that can help foster a great work-life balance. By using smart intranet features like Tags, you can associate and categorise your content with relevant keywords, to ensure that all your intranet content and news are easily searchable and managed. This will make it easier for employees to find the information they need, and help them stay organized and focused on their work.
Tagging is works on employees and enables you to deliver a better content experience, which is key for any intranet. By harnessing the power of tags, your intranet can match Employee Profile Tags with news and content tagged with the same keywords, meaning your intranet will automatically serve the right content to the right people. Employees are more likely to engage with your content if it's relevant to them. Tags give you the power to deliver a smarter employee experience that's tailored to each user, serving relevant content that resonates with them
3. Custom branding your intranet - and giving it a name.
Intranet design can play a big role in creating a positive employee experience. If your intranet looks great, it's more likely to get used by your employees. By implementing the right design features, you can create an intranet that is user-friendly, informative, and visually appealing. First and foremost, give your intranet a name that accurately reflects the content and your company culture. At Hub, we make intranet branding fully customisable, so make the colour palette, fonts, background imagery and logo your own. Plus, we have numerous features that allow you to showcase strong graphics and imagery to create an engaging user experience, with things like call-to-action buttons and carousel announcements. By taking the time to create a visual identity for your intranet, employees appreciate the care and attention that's been given to deliver them a great experience.
4. Harness social features for an engagement-boost.
Some management might recoil with the fear that 'social features' mean employees will waste all day chatting with each other online, but a social intranet is more than just 'chatting'. Social intranet features are key to any modern digital workplace, and provide you fantastic tools to deliver better employee experiences. Just a simply thing like adding Likes and Commenting features to your company news, can make a huge difference in employee engagement levels, and help you better understand how your content is being received by employees.
Other social intranet features like Hub's Group Forums, create collaborative spaces for employees to communicate together and share information more effectively. Task Management features make it easier for employees to communicate and organise work more efficiently. There's of course polls, surveys and whole host of other social engagement features available, all of which will give your intranet a positive engagement-boost.
5. Use plenty of images and graphics to support your text.
If you want your employees to have a great experience on your intranet, you need to use ample images and graphics to support your text. Using images and graphics to supoprt your content, instead of just text, is a great way to ensure your intranet is user-friendly and easy to navigate. Not only do they make the text more readable, but they can also highlight key points, show off important content more effectively, and drive engagement with more visible calls-to-action.
Good design principles will help to increase employee engagement and create greater user satisfaction with their experience on your intranet. So, go ahead and give your intranet more images for the employee experience it deserves!
6. Keep a clean and simple look and feel to your intranet.
Your intranet is a reflection of your company culture and values. Keeping a clean and simple look and feel to your intranet is essential. It's not just about aesthetics—it's about usability, too.
A clean-looking employee intranet will promote a positive image of your company. That means no flashy animations, no pop-up ads, no unnecessary bells or whistles that distract from the content you are trying to present. Instead, focus on making sure every page on your intranet has a consistent layout, with clear navigation and links that are easy for users to find.
Ensure all content is searchable and filterable, and use colors that are easy on the eye to create an intranet that's easy to use.
7. Get personal with Profiles, and get everyone to fill them.
A great employee intranet feature is User Profiles. You can't get to know your employees if you don't know who they are, and profiles allow you to put faces to names within your organization. A good employee intranet makes it easy for each worker to update their own profile, with information about their role, their team responsibilities, hobbies and expertise, their employee tags and more. Ensuring everyone fills out their profiles as part of their onboarding process, creates an accurate employee directory from the off.
In addition, personal profiles makes it easy for you to find and connect with your employees online, with direct private messaging and bulk emailing features. Plus a searchable employee directory means you can easily find the right person quickly.
Not only is your employee directory a useful tool in itself, but the information within the personal profiles help to power a wide range of other automated features, including Birthday, Work Anniversary and New Starter Announcements to celebrate employees.
But one of the most important uses of employee profiles is to maintain an accurate, up to date list of everyone that works at your company. This means whenever someone leaves or joins your company, they are automatically added or removed from your intranet directory, making it easier for other users to know who's working where.
8. Use dedicated Group Forums & spaces for discussion.
Employees need to feel connected to really be engaged and productive. One way to achieve this is by creating dedicated spaces for employees to collaborate, work and discuss. Intranet features like Group Forums are a great place for employees to work together on particular projects, share ideas and information, and ultimately be more productive in their roles as they connect to the people and resources they need.
Hub's Group Forums provide private or open spaces where group members can create an unlimited hierarchy of pages to store information specifically relevant to their needs. Group Chat Threads empower collaboration, and allow employees to post and reply to conversations in real time, plus chat notifications drive employees back into the conversation for greater engagement and sense of connectivity whenever a new chat is added. The more you encourage your employees to communicate with each other, the more engaged they will feel, and having dedicated spaces for discussion delivers a better employee experience.
9. Customised department pages make your intranet easier to use and navigate.
One of the best ways to improve your intranet is to divide it into dedicated spaces, departments, and project areas. By creating an organised hierarchy of pages and resources, it makes it easier for employees to find the information they need, because it gives them a way logical way to navigate through the site and its content more quickly.
By utilising smart intranet page features like Page Folder Icons, Quick Links, and 'My Favourite' options, employees will be able to go directly to a page that has the relevant information they want, without having to search through a cluttered homepage or click through multiple pages to get what they're going. It also makes sure each section of your intranet is focused on one topic (like HR), so employees know where they can find information specific to their department or role within the company.
In the end, creating a modern intranet that is user-friendly, effective and customized to your business is the key to creating a great worker experience.